Sleeves scratching the back of cards? Best sleeves for toploaders?

[rockerdawn]

I’ve been doing some tests to find the less risky sleeve to use for toploader long-term storage and surprisingly found that both pennies sleeves and deck sleeve can cause considerable damage. I used the following methodology:

1. Always using new sleeves.
2. Taking photos of the cards from all angles with a 30x magnifying len & also with the smartphone light to reveal hidden micro scratches.
3. Obviously getting a card in or out a sleeve 100x times will scratch it, I limited the testing from 3 to 5 times inserting a removing a card.

Apparently, Dragon Shield / deck sleeves issues comes from them being “too hard” compare to soft sleeves, there is too much friction when the cards gets in and out.

For Penny sleeves, the damage seems to be mitigated by avoiding pinching the sleeves to remove the card I always though that this was better to avoid the surface of the sleeves getting into contact with the holo while inserting / removing the cards but this is super detrimental for the backs.

Results:

Dragon Shield Classic Border Markings that appears on the corner back after +3 sleeves changes:

Penny sleeves scratches that appear after 3-5 removals

Honestly after this I don’t know what to use. Any insight on what to do to avoid this or what sleeve to use? I always use dragon shields with side loading binders but now that I have more expensive cards was thinking about using toploaders binders, however the fear of the sleeve scratching them is blocking me from opening new sealed products because I don’t know what to do with the cards

[Versy]

I’ve never noticed any damage from using sleeves personally. How hard are you gripping them? Maybe the toploaders are too tight? Are you sure there was no dirt or dust on the card or in the sleeve? I’ve had dirt from a card get caught in the sleeve before.

[rockerdawn]

100% clean and new sleeves and tried with several. You’ll only notice after inserting and removing the cards around 2-4 times. As per the toploaders, just regular premium toploaders from ultrapro. Probably the thing is that dragon shield sleeves are only to be used with perfect fits or for playing. As per the scratches with the penny sleeves, probably is a mishandling from my side

[xileets]

Did you do a before and after? I hate asking, but I gotta cuz I don’t see a mention.

I’ve never noticed significant damage, but generally, I only sleeve mine once carefully, and then don’t remove them. I always use UP Penny sleeves for storage sleeving. Thicker play sleeves may be more capable of scratching since they’re stiffer, but… ? And then I use UP Pro fot (perfect fit inners) because they’re clearer, and throw out the 5% that are too tight. Dragon shield and KMC are slightly less clear.